


Eulogy

by cherrysprite



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Confessions, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 15:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20449262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrysprite/pseuds/cherrysprite
Summary: Scott asked him to write the eulogy.





	Eulogy

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for this in advance. This style is different than normal, but I really tried with this one.
> 
> Please read safely.

Scott asked him to write the eulogy.  
  
When the shock of it all had started to wear off and the pack was left to pick up the pieces, Scott came into Liam's dark room and slowly opened the shades to let the first bits of sunlight in in days before he asked. The alpha of the pack had wanted the last goodbye to be as respectful and elegant as any other, and he had done some planning already. Lilies for the flowers, open casket. Friends in attendance. He'd also decided that Liam should be the one to speak while they were all gathered there.  
  
Liam hadn't answered him right away, leaving his head almost dead still on the uncomfortably warm pillow he couldn't bring himself to flip, but he knew he was going to do it anyway. He had been the one closest to the deceased, in more ways than one, so it was only natural that Liam would deliver the eulogy.  
  
It was important to say that Liam had never written one before. For all the death involved in their lifetime, Liam had never been the one most important to the person who was gone. He'd been there in attendance for Gabe's funeral, and went to Josh and Tracy's, but this was different. Deep down, as much as it felt sickening to admit, he knew that the others' would seem almost insignificant compared to this one.   
  
Closer to the surface, Liam knew he couldn't handle it.  
  
But he eventually got out of bed, much to his parents' surprise, and padded down the hallway feeling weightless, like he wasn't really there at all. If anything was the same, that was it; the feeling that nothing was actually real. Liam wasn't quite sure yet if he wanted to break out of it, and he wondered what would happen when the walls inevitably fell.  
  
He wasn't quite sure what he was writing as he wrote it. All he knew was that he couldn't feel his fingers, not the tips or middles or his hands in general, as his pen hit the paper in front of him. Nothing flowed, nothing came to mind.  
  
It took him hours. There were crumpled up pieces of paper that he didn't notice after awhile all over his desk and floor, and by the time he was done with the page and a half long piece he finally managed to do, he was ready to pass out again and sleep for another twelve hours. That was all he seemed to have the energy to do. It was the only thing that kept the heartache away; being knocked out and unaware.  
  
The last thing he thought about was the amount of time it took to write the eulogy, and if he had even gotten to talk to Him for that long. Had there been enough words to fill three and a quarter hours? Or was it all just punching and avoiding and trying not to let things slip, things that Liam now realized he should have said much sooner. That was the thought that followed him into sleep as his head bumped against the surface of his desk.  
  
That and the image of black blood and torn skin.  
  
__  
  
Liam was silent as he fastened a black tie around his neck. It didn't matter how tight it was since he felt like he couldn't breathe anyway, yet another one of the only things that remained the same in the past three days. The wound was still fresh and his chest was still being crushed.  
  
His parents drove him to the church. He sat in the backseat, silent again, with his hands folded in his lap. It seemed unheard of to play around with his phone during the thirty minute ride, so he was either staring out the window or into his lap, covered by the stiff black suit he'd never worn before. In another life, the suit would have been used for prom. Now, Liam doubted he would go.  
  
The cross on top of the large building was ironic to Liam, remembering what He had said before about being an atheist. Scott obviously hadn't been there for that time, so it hadn't gone into the planning that was mostly done by him.   
  
Liam looked up at it from the car window and then at the sky. Even if He had thought that there was no God, Liam still believed that there was some higher power up there. If there was evil in the world and Hell waiting below, there was surely the other end.   
  
Somewhere, there was a higher power waiting for him, and Liam wondered if they had decided to give the one they lost on that Monday night the ending he deserved this time.  
  
He only got out of the car when his stepfather shut it off and his mother turned around to look at him with a sad look in her eye, reminding him that they were where they were supposed to be. His breath was shaky as he stepped out, and now that the crosses were right in front of him with the bricks smelling of sadness and the church graveyard in sight in the background, Liam again got the feeling that he couldn't handle this.  
  
His footsteps were uneven and hesitant as he walked into the church, already familiar with the setup of it all from funerals past. In those, the caskets were closed whether they were empty or not, and he was seated towards the back of the room. Today, the top end of the wooden coffin was opened, exposing pale blue satin lining, and Liam was expected to stand up in front of everyone and talk about the one inside like he was still alive, like he was just talking lightly about good memories they had together.  
  
His parents were gone now, off to talk to Melissa in hushed tones about what was about to happen, while Liam stood in the middle of the floor and zoned out on the light blue lining. He couldn't see the body, see Him from where he was standing, and he couldn't tell if he was grateful or not for that. One part of him screamed to run, to never look in fear of falling apart. The other told him that the last image he had of him shouldn't be riddled with blood and gunshot wounds visible right below his ribcage and close to his heart.  
  
Liam felt his eyes well up with tears but he was broken out of it by a warm hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see Mason there, finally tearing his eyes away. "I know it hurts," his best friend whispered, but there was nothing to follow up.   
  
Mason, however, would not know how much it hurt. He didn't know that Liam was numb inside and out and he was starting to feel like he was being eaten alive from his chest outwards with every passing second he stood in that church. Mason would never understand the type of pain that Liam was harboring, since he hadn't lost Corey.   
  
In any other occasion, Liam would have lashed out and told him this, eyes lit up gold and fighting to keep his claws in. Maybe in a month or two. Today, he was quiet, and nodded. He let Mason believe that they were going through the same thing. No one else needed to know about it.  
  
Several others came into the room and talked in hushed whispers, further sending Liam into a spiral. Stiles nodded at him and Lydia gave him a hug before they sat down in the second row of seats. They wouldn't need many, after all. Scott and Malia both told him it would be okay, the lie Mason didn't finish. Hayden was there and she wrapped her arms around him in a way that told him that she already knew what Liam was going through, more than his friends did. He was as grateful for her and for that as he could have been then.  
  
The air was thick and heavy as everyone was seated. Only the first three rows were filled on either side of the aisle, leaving six of the benches full. Liam, Jenna, and David sat in one of the front ones, while Mason, Corey, and Nolan were in the other, those six being the ones who were closest to Him. The humans in the room couldn't hear the speakings of "I'm going to miss him" or "I wish it could have been different" and "Are we sure Liam is okay?"  
  
He couldn't blame anyone for asking that. That Wednesday morning in the mirror, he saw himself, pale and with dark circles, looking weak even in all of his muscles. He looked like a ghost of himself, which he couldn't be surprised at. Whether it was because he knew how far into the dark he was or if he was just too exhausted would go unknown.  
  
What he had to do now, he realized, was put on a strong face for his parents and friends. He couldn't let this funeral become the darkest point of anyone else's life, even if it was coming into his close, sitting in second place next to the night of the tragedy. No one was quite sure what to do.  
  
So Liam stepped up to the podium, his knees shaking the slightest bit that made everyone else nervous. If he collapsed when he got there, he hoped he stayed asleep.  
  
He didn't look at the body and made a point of to as he got up to the wooden stand, shutting his eyes and taking a deep breath. People shifted in their seats as they prepared themselves to hear what Liam had to say. None of them were thinking about the way with words the beta didn't have. All they were expecting was a brief talk about how he hadn't known him for long and a few fabricated or glamorized times they had together.  
  
Liam pulled the paper out of his pocket and straightened it out against the wood. The words he wrote were unrecognizable. There had been no editing, no reading it over, just tucking it into the top drawer of his dresser and leaving it for the next day. What he hadn't expected was for everything he wrote to feel so foreign, like someone else had given it to him to read.  
  
His throat felt raw and thick despite not having used it in days, and he cleared it painfully as his fingers played with the edge of the paper. Now the notebook paper he used seemed juvenile and disrespectful. He had picked up the pen from the floor. Was anything he had done good enough for-  
  
"One thing I'll never forget about..." Liam began, hardly recognizing his own voice. He swallowed. "Theo, is what a personality he always had."  
  
Everyone in the room could agree with that statement. Whether they liked him or not, thought him awful or a friend, it was something everyone related to. Something shifted in his stomach uncomfortably when he realized he had done that on purpose without realizing it.  
  
'Theo Raeken was a friend and a man who redeemed himself so many times over.'  
  
'He was always the one to win in a fight and smirk at you afterwards, always to tell you he wasn't serious.'  
  
'Even though he got into spats, we all can say that we cared for him.'  
  
Every single thing on the paper was impersonal and said nothing about what Liam really thought of Theo. His knuckles turned white as he gripped onto the podium and tried to figure out which one of the downright awful sentences he could say next. He didn't even realize he had been quiet for too long, chewing on his lip.  
  
He thought of the time that he had come to a pack meeting for the first time, but then his vision blurred over and the paper ceased to matter. He took it in his hands and folded it up back into fours, tucking it into the jacket of his suit that was beginning to feel too hot.   
  
His mom was looking at him, and Liam felt something inside start to crack, possibly the same thing that had settled itself into the pit of his stomach and made a home there. He never could get over it, the sad look she always had. Somehow her sympathy hit him even more.  
  
Whatever was cracking was going fast as he skimmed the room with his eyes. He had all attention now that the paper was away, some wondering if he would even say anything at all. "Another time I'll never forget was the first time that he saved my life," Liam said honestly, his voice unsteady. He hadn't planned to go this far. Some of them didn't even know that this happened. "I said some pretty terrible things that night. We were in the hospital, and the ghostriders were trying to capture us. I told him that I wasn't going to save him if he got taken. That I was going to use him as bait." Liam sucked in a breath. "That night he looked death right in the eyes and charged at them, trying to give me a chance to escape while I still could. It was the time that I knew that he was always going to be there for me, no matter what he said otherwise."  
  
A soft, tiny smile came over his face and he looked down at the podium. "Most wouldn't have seen him as a self-sacrificing type, but he was just that."   
  
Liam opened his mouth once more, going to talk and look around the room when the glass inside him began to shatter.  
  
His eyes landed on Theo's closed ones, and the smile fell off his lips faster than he knew. He couldn't take his eyes away.   
  
Arms, crossed over his chest like it hadn't been torn up and shot through, hidden under a white dress shirt that he knew Theo never owned. A gold chain bracelet that he did was around his left wrist, the wrong one, and Liam couldn't breathe. He had been wearing that bracelet just a few nights before, and he distinctly remembered hooking his fingers into it desperately as it began to get hard to hold onto a blood-slick wrist.  
  
He had been wearing the bracelet stained red when he died, because Theo was dead, and no matter how much time Liam had to process it it was all falling into place right now.  
  
Broken glass tore at him from the inside and he couldn't look away. He couldn't look away from his hair, perfect as ever, and skin only kept looking natural by the embalming fluid in his veins.  
  
There had been so much blood.  
  
"T-theo," Liam stuttered, the name feeling so much heavier in his mouth than before. "May not have seemed like the self-sacrificing type, but he was. So many times over, he ran into danger to save me or someone else. At least three times the first night in the hospital before we defeated the ghostriders and again when he pulled me out of the line of fire when we fought with the hunters." Liam's eyes filled with tears that now threatened to fall. "He got shot in the shoulder pushing me out of the way of bullets a second time."  
  
His mother was crying. He didn't tell her about any of that, figuring it best not to worry her with all of the dangers of the supernatural, but there was no stopping it now. It was overdue.   
  
Hayden caught his eye from the floor and tears finally started to roll down his cheeks, hot and unforgiving, his blurred vision just a reminder of how everything was different. "Theo was the first chimera," He said through it all, surprising everyone with the route he chose to go. "He was the one that we all thought started the killings and the terror in Beacon Hills when I was only sixteen years old, but he wasn't. I was the one who saw firsthand just what happened to him to make him become who he was, and how it affected him up until he...he died. He thought he owed everything he had to the world and did nothing less than try and give it." At that point, Liam wasn't sure how he was still talking or if he was even going at all, just imagining it. His voice heard from the benches was shaky and distressed like they'd never seen from him before. "He was scared of being a failure, something he was always tortured with, and scared of not being enough." Liam couldn't see at all. The visions of Monday night were coming back. "He wasn't scared when he died."  
  
"That time when he jumped in front of the fire for me, I wasn't so lucky to get to take him home and help get the bullets out," He choked back a sob. "That time, he fell to the ground, and there wasn't any getting back up."  
  
That time, the rogue hunter who shot him decided that she was satisfied watching Liam scream out in terror. He had dropped to his knees beside Theo as the chimera desperately fought for air through failing lungs.  
  
That time, Theo had looked so small and fragile as Liam held him in his arms, breaking down when he found that he couldn't take Theo's pain because it didn't hurt. Theo had smiled at him through a mouthful of blood and said the words Liam had been waiting to say himself, the words that fell on deaf ears by the time he said them himself. _"I love you. A-and I don't...don't know why I never said it before,"_ Theo fought out, gripping onto the edge of Liam's jacket as the beta werewolf cried his eyes out._ "-but I do. I just..."_   
  
Theo's heartbeat was slowing. Liam's fingers accidentally caught around the bracelet.  
  
_ "Remember that."_  
  
Each breath Theo took was longer than the last on the exhale, until he finally took the last one and went lax against Liam, eyes open, staring up at him right before death as if he were everything to him.  
  
Liam was crying at the podium and he didn't care. "And he died without knowing that I loved him too," He admitted without telling the rest of the story, letting everyone else put it together himself. "-But he was strong until the end. He fought to stay alive for as long as he could, and I'm always going to be grateful for that, for every second we had together."  
  
With one last glance at Theo, laying peacefully in his final resting place, Liam remembered his smile and hoped it went on somewhere else, in a better place.  
  
He said nothing else and stepped away from the podium, then almost collapsed, being caught by his stepfather while wishing he would have just hit the floor.

_Fin_.

**Author's Note:**

> I never know what to say at the end of character death fics. "I hope you enjoyed???" I know you didn't 'enjoy' this, per say, but I, uh, hope you were entertained by it. I'd really really love some feedback on this because I always feel like my angst is some of my worst writing, so if you have any opinions, please share!!
> 
> Thank you for reading! Sorry again.


End file.
